A Thousand Shattered Mirrors
by Shockz
Summary: AU, sequel to In Memoriam. "No more secrets." The Level Plus incident has ended, but rumors abound of battles between Accelerator, the most powerful esper in Academy City, and a mysterious female opponent wearing military AR glasses. What is the black project known only as RADIO NOISE, and what does it have to do with Mikoto?
1. Prologue

**Author's note** : Someone with a Graveyard of Abandoned Fanfics as huge as mine probably shouldn't have started on a project this large. But since that graveyard has since been paved over and covered up with a SHINY NEW COMPLETED FANFIC, I'd say I'm on the right track! Some background: several years ago, somewhere between realizing that the then-current season of Railgun was actually really, really good, reading a (since-vanished) blog post talking about how Kuroko is massively underutilized and could very easily be a much more interesting character than she is with a little effort, and facepalming at the turn for the utterly ludicrous that the Index light novels take after the Kazakiri Hyouka arc, I got the idea that I was going to rewrite the entire Raildexverse from the ground up.

As many of you reading this will know, I got about 5/6 through the first story, In Memoriam, and then abruptly went on a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, during which...well...quite a lot of things happened. In any case, in late 2017 I decided I was going to finish In Memoriam and continue the To Aruverse Rewrite Project, as my co-writer and I had taken to calling it, and over about 3 months of writing we finished that sucker!

...with an epilogue that was pretty much just a blatant sequel tease.

So, point is, this is that sequel. It's based on...well, you can probably figure out which canon arc it's based on.

Same warning as before: When I say "from the ground up", I mean "from the ground up". I wanted this to be recognizable as Railgun/Index, so the setting is more-or-less similar on the broadest scale, many story elements and plot points are at least superficially similar, and the names on the cast list are the same, with a few exceptions. But character personalities, motivations and histories may or may not have been shifted drastically. Details of the setting may be mostly similar or entirely different. **Make no assumptions based on canon! **If you do I will make loud pterodactyl-like screeches and sic my cat on you, and her claws are _very_ sharp.

Oh, and it goes without saying that even if, no, _especially_ if you're a hardcore To Aru fan, **you should _probably_ read In Memoriam first**. Otherwise you're going to be very confused.

So without further ado, please enjoy _A Thousand Shattered Mirrors_!

* * *

Night in Academy City: the hunter stalks, and the prey flees.

The prey weaves a twisted path through the rain-soaked streets, through every dark crevice and forgotten corner of the city that has been its entire world for most of its too-short life. Spontaneously, it takes a sharp turn into a narrow, graffiti-stained alleyway, hoping in vain to throw the hunter off the trail for even a few precious seconds. The prey knows this will not delay the hunter for long—the prey can feel the hunter's presence every so often, watching, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

But nonetheless, the prey flees. For the prey has looked into the eyes of the hunter, and seen nothing—no hate, no fury, no malice—nothing but the cold, unflinching desire to _hunt_ , to _kill_. The prey saw this, and on that day the prey knew fear.

The prey knows this city better than most, but is running short on options—too many open spaces nearby, not enough places to hide. It finds the exit to the alleyway, and makes a short, desperate dash to an abandoned school across the street, slamming through the ancient fire doors, hoping that the few precious moments of concealment will make up for the noise. The prey has power, true, power enough to defend against the hunter for a time. But the prey knows that it will not bring salvation forever, for the hunter has power as well, unimaginable power, and will not hesitate to use it.

The prey knows time is short; it quietly makes its way to a classroom's long-shattered window, slips through it and quietly dashes for a storm drain's outlet, the hunter's soft footsteps never far away. The hunter will force a confrontation soon, and it will end the same way it always has. The same way it always must.

The prey has used this storm drain as an escape route before; it knows the hunter will not be dissuaded from following, even in the slowly-intensifying rain. As it trudges through a river of filthy urban water, it hears splashes from not far behind, and growing closer, an echo of its own footsteps.

The prey turns a corner and stops, out of breath, out of energy, out of time. Better to make a stand here, while it still has strength left to defend itself. It steels itself, knowing it cannot afford to show mercy now, that the briefest instant of weakness could be fatal.

Around the corner comes...not the hunter, not yet. Instead, a swarm of tiny, silvery discs float lazily through the air, moving up and down, side to side, as if searching for something...as if searching for the prey. Weapons of some kind? Tools of the hunter, certainly. One buzzes near the prey's ear, and without thinking, the prey reaches out with its power and swats it away.

The reaction is immediate—blindingly bright arcs of plasma suddenly crisscross the tunnel, and it is all the prey can do to leap forward, towards the turn in the tunnel, towards where the hunter _must_ be.

And then the prey comes face to face with the hunter.

Shiny black milspec AR glasses. A Howa Type 41 Gauss carbine, power pack removed for obvious reasons. The hunter's hair, clothes, makeup, even some facial features change from encounter to encounter, but the blank expression, mouth pressed into a thin, determined line, never changes.

The hunter raises the rifle.

The prey takes one step forward.

The hunter disintegrates, unimaginable forces twisting and tearing her adolescent features into a mist of blood and gore.

The prey stares down at the atrocity he has wrought, and feels no joy, no comfort, no pride. Not even horror, any more, and that worries him perhaps the most of all. For he knows the hunter will return the next day, and the next, and the next, until she claims her prize. And she is _learning_.

One patch of the hunter's skin remains intact, a small chunk of the left side of her torso the prey knows to leave alone, if only to track how many times he has killed her. It displays a tattoo in simple black lettering:

 **RN-582**


	2. Mikoto - Open Circuit

There are still too many secrets.

It's been two weeks since the end of the Level Plus incident. Two weeks since I found out something horrible, something _monstrous_ took place in the city I call my home. Two weeks since I faced down a woman who destroyed herself trying to make it right. Two weeks since I helped to kill... _something_...that was born from her mind.

Two weeks since I learned how much I really don't know.

And the worst part is, somehow, I know I've only scratched the surface. There's the obvious question—if something like the IUE project could happen, not just ignored but approved and supervised by the city government, what other atrocities could be happening behind the scenes?

And then there's those two words. Two words Kiyama Harumi burned into my mind, that she made sure I would remember—that she said only I could make right.

 **RADIO NOISE.**

I'm not sure why she didn't just tell me what it is, why she couldn't just force the memories into my head the way she did with the IUE. Maybe it was too much for her brain, what with it being on the verge of failing completely. Maybe she didn't remember what it was anymore, only that it was something that needed to be made right.

Or maybe she did get something across, and I just didn't realize it at the time. I think I might be seeing it in my dreams.

It's the same one, almost every night: a war-torn battlefield, sometimes quiet, sometimes with the sounds of war so loud my ears ring when I wake up. I see the soldiers surrounding me fight and fall, fearlessly, silently. And I realize: every single one of them is a _child_.

And when I turn over one of the bodies, my eyes roam over its bloodstained face and meet its frozen eyes, and it's like staring into a—

* * *

I wake up with a gasp, take the usual few moments to realize that I'm in bed, in the Shidarezakura dorms, not stranded on some screwed-up foreign battlefield. It's starting to become almost routine at this point—ungodly hour of the morning, check. Pajamas and bed soaked in sweat, check. Kuroko still sound asleep across the room, check. My phone (newly replaced; my last one was fried sometime during the fight) says it's 4 in the morning. Wonderful.

The nightmares started coming the night I got out of neuro-regen therapy, just a couple days after the fight. I've asked the doctors if nightmares were an expected side effect, and the answer was: not _directly_ , but if I'd been through something nightmare-inducing immediately prior to therapy it could make those nightmares more frequent and more intense for a while.

I couldn't get a straight answer on how long "a while" might be. Welcome to the new normal, I guess.

* * *

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, I'm stuck wondering just what the heck to do with the rest of the morning. I glance over my summer homework briefly but can't focus. I check the news on my phone— _protests in Russia as Putin re-elected at age 94; US opens first new nuclear power plant in 54 years_ —but nothing really catches my attention. Per Uiharu's instructions I run a couple searches for retro CD players, look through the results, then pretend to almost buy one and back out before hitting CONFIRM.

Uiharu-san... _argh_. Thinking of her is enough to bring back the memories of what happened in the hospital with Saten yesterday. _I was just trying to cheer her up and encourage her! Why the hell did she freak out at me like that? What is her problem?_

I stew on that for a while until Kuroko's alarm goes off at 5:30 sharp; as usual I hear about eight seconds of surprisingly intense electric guitar before she manages to find her phone and mute it. One of these days I'll have to ask her what kind of music she actually listens to. She yawns as she slowly peels herself away from the bed, then looks over at me, blinks a couple times, and frowns. "Good morning...Already awake, Onee-sama?"

"Yeah." I don't elaborate.

"I see." The frown only deepens. "You know...if there's anything troubling you...I'm here if you want to talk about it."

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"...If you say so." She nods and gets up; before long she's dressed and out the door for her morning run.

Leaving me alone with a whole day ahead of me.

A couple hours of texting and gacha games on my cellphone later, I'm not any less bored. Kuroko is doing Judgement stuff. Kinuho and Maaya are both visiting family. Hokaze has a date. Megumi has soccer practice. Even—ugh— _Kongou_ is participating in some kind of research project. I wouldn't mind hanging out with Uiharu, but that would probably mean coming within visual range of Saten and I'm pretty sure she'd come after me with a baseball bat or something. I could always spend a few hours at the arcade, but wrecking nublets at Street Fighter VR doesn't sound as appealing as it usually does for some reason.

I scroll through my contact list, and one entry catches my attention—Tsuchimikado Maika. That's right, the earplugs she made me got fried during the fight. I should call her and apologize, maybe ask if she can make some replacements? I dial her number—

" _MISAKA-SAN!_ " She picks up immediately. "Ohmigod it's been forever how are you?!"

"Hey, Maika-chan. Uh, listen, about the earplugs you made me—"

"Oh don't worry about those I've already looked at the telemetry from the Big Thing That Happened that Big Bro _totally_ knows about but he won't tell me anything but anyway I'm working on replacements with way better tolerances and they can do other cool stuff too and I was actually thinking about calling you to see if you wanted to test them can you come over today?"

I blink. _Did she breathe at all during that?_ "Uh, yeah, sure! Where do you live again?"

* * *

I've never been to Maika's apartment before; it's pretty tiny, all the more so since she apparently shares it with her brother. (He's not around today, a fact that Maika says I should be extraordinarily grateful for.) A bunkbed and computer desk take up much of what little floor space there is, but there's enough room to move around at least temporarily.

"Sooooooo first off, are you hungry?" Maika asks as she finishes with the tour. "I don't have much except for instant ramen and pizza, though…"

"Nah, I'm good." I take a look at the computer desk; it's littered with various half-finished electronic things I can't even guess at the function of, plus a small 3D printer tucked in one corner. "So what're you working on here?"

"Oh! Well there's the earplugs obviously but also I'm helping Uiharu-senpai with some security stuff and also working on a new way to control the cleaner bots because they finally patched the NFC bug I've been using, only took them six months, and then there's this thing I'm calling Project Aufwachen which if it works and it probably won't I'm going to need you to help test it but if it does work it's going to be _totally awesome_!"

"Oh, uh, that's cool! What exactly is Project...Off-thingy?"

Maika's grin is huge. "I _so_ want to tell you but Uiharu-senpai said to keep it secret from everybody because otherwise the government is gonna find out about it and probably steal all my ideas. Which I mean I dunno if that would be bad, I'mma need _lotsa_ cash to even build a partial working prototype, but Uiharu-senpai is usually right about this stuff. Oh, here are the new earplugs!" She holds them up; they look pretty much the same as the old ones. "Should be good up to at least double the voltage you were putting out before they cut off last time. Also now they're a fully functional Internet phone, here, let me give you the IP address to set 'em up." She scribbles what look like random letters and numbers onto a post-it note and hands it to me. "Should be pretty self-explanatory. So yeah, that's that I guess."

There's a moment of awkward silence as I try to process everything she just said. "Wait. You said they're a _cellphone_ now?"

"Well, Internet phone. Logging into cellphone networks is more trouble than it's worth; but they can connect to wifi or satfi and make calls from there. Call quality isn't too great, unfortunately, not much room for a good microphone or speaker, but if you've got an emergency and fried your cellphone or something, well, they're there!"

"Huh, okay. That actually could be pretty useful. Thanks for making these, Maika!" I start digging for my wallet. "Uh, I know these can't be cheap to make, how much—"

She glares at me. "Don't you dare even finish that sentence. I do this stuff for fun. Plus it's all on Big Bro's card anyway." Her expression softens, turns thoughtful. "I wonder why he doesn't get us a bigger apartment? I know he can afford it. Anyway! I got no other plans today, wanna hit the arcade or something?"

* * *

Any embarrassment or awkwardness I might have felt at hanging out with a girl five years younger than me quickly evaporates once we reach the arcade. It is there that I discover that while Tsuchimikado Maika is not _quite_ better than me at Street Fighter, she is definitely good enough to make me work for a win. Maybe I should hang out with her more often…

* * *

My good mood fades pretty quickly once I get back to the dorm that evening; I know there's not much but creepy nightmares, sweaty bedsheets, and a complete lack of actual rest awaiting me tonight. And sure enough, that night goes pretty much the same way as the one before it.

One thing's different this time, though. When I check my phone for the time (3:45 AM), there's also a new message. From Uiharu-san, roughly...45 minutes ago. Not exactly surprising, from the short time I've known her. What is surprising is the contents of the message: "hey, tracked down that retro cd player u were looking 4. come by l8r and ill show u!"

Needless to say, I have not spontaneously developed an interest in retro CD players, though (at Uiharu's insistence) my search history might indicate otherwise. In fact, that message basically just translates to "I found something I can't talk about over the Internet. Come by ASAP."

 _Already? So soon after Saten-san..._ I wince as I recall what happened in the hospital yesterday. What exactly did I say that got her so angry? Still gotta figure that out. I sigh, peel myself off the bed, and head for the shower.

* * *

After texting back Uiharu with a "sure, around noon good?", I spend most of the morning half-heartedly trying to catch up on summer homework...mostly to no avail. Not even Kuroko's daily coffee delivery (never asked for, always appreciated) helps me make sense out of the linear algebra problems. I'm too distracted, too preoccupied with whatever revelations Uiharu-san might have uncovered. It's a relief when I finally close my books and head for the bus stop, Kuroko in tow.

"I sincerely doubt she's found anything...er...notable," Kuroko says as we board the bus. "Assuming there's something to find at all, it won't be anywhere that the general public would be able to find it."

"Uiharu-san's not exactly 'the general public', though, is she?" I shoot back.

"...I suppose not," she says, frowning. "Still, do you really think there's something else? _Another_ incident like...like all of that? What if…" Her frown deepens as she looks around us at the crowded bus.

"What if what?"

"Nothing. Later. Best not to talk about it here."

* * *

Uiharu-san opens the door with a big, cheery smile. "Hey, Misaka-san! And...hey, you!" She smirks over at Kuroko, who just rolls her eyes. "You are not gonna _believe_ how awesome this old CD player is, it's got so many dials—it's got dials on its _dials_. And some of them even go to 11! Here, come in, come in. Ruiko-chan!" She calls back into the apartment. "Misaka and Shirai are here!"

" _Kay_."

I take off my shoes in the entryway and let Uiharu-san show me around the cozy little apartment. Emphasis on "cozy" and "little": it's bigger than Maika's place, but the whole thing, bedroom, kitchen, living 'room' and all, is still barely bigger than a Shidarezakura or Tokiwadai dorm bedroom.

Oh, and right in the middle of the living room floor (in front of a large sky-blue comfy chair currently occupied by Saten-san) is a gigantic...audio...thing. What were they called, bang boxes? I stare at Uiharu. "Wait, you actually _bought_ one of those things?"

A muscle twitches under her eye, and her big, welcoming smile suddenly looks slightly annoyed. "Of _course_ I did. Because it was what you were looking for, and that's why we're meeting here today. _Right?_ "

"...Right."

"Right! Hang on, let's test it out, let me close the blinds real fast—" She taps a homemade-looking button wired up next to the living room window, and with a quick _whirr_ the blinds immediately snap closed. She waits a moment, and then taps a quick sequence of buttons on top of the CD player. A faint, staticky humming noise suddenly fills my ears, and Uiharu's grin drops. "Okay. Wifi and cell signals are jammed, any cameras are seeing nothing but an infrared whiteout, any regular microphones are hearing nothing but white noise, and any _laser_ mics pointed at the window are picking up early-aughties pop music. _Now_ we can talk."

I...um... "I...um…Isn't that a little much?"

She looks at me very seriously. "Maybe, if we're _not_ being watched, and I can't say for sure that we are. But _if_ we're being watched, the right question is 'are you sure this is enough?'"

"...Okay..." I decide to humor her. "...So, _are_ you sure this is enough?"

"No. But it's all we could afford."

"I see...Uiharu-san, are you _quite_ sure these...er...security measures are in compliance with your rental agreement and city safety codes?" Kuroko asks, examining the CD player dubiously.

Uiharu doesn't dignify that with a response beyond a withering glare. "In any case, let's not waste any more time. As you've probably guessed by now...I've found something. Several somethings. One sec, let me get my laptop…"

Minutes later, all four of us are staring at the first piece of hard evidence: a document titled "Self Defense Force 2042 Budget Overview - Advanced Research Projects Division".

"People submit National Disclosure Law requests for this kind of info all the time," Uiharu says. " _Usually_ they get redacted to the point of uselessness. This time, though…" She scrolls down to a section titled "Collaborative Projects - Academy City Special Administrative Zone", under which is what _looks_ like a chart of project names and their respective budgets, though all but two of the project names (SEALED LAMP and CANTOS) have been covered by a thick black line. "Best guess, some temp got put in charge of unredacting _just_ those two and screwed it up somehow. In any case…" She quickly highlights the chart and copy-pastes it over into a spreadsheet program—and just like that, the redaction lines are _gone_.

I scan over the newly revealed project names. ETERNITY HOUSE. DEEP SENTINEL III. INVERSION LAYER. And...there it is, plain as day.

RADIO NOISE.

"It's real…" I find myself mumbling. "It...it actually exists." It wasn't just the paranoid ranting of a brain-damaged neuroscientist, not just a delusion in my own head. It's a real, actual thing.

"Yeah. It's real, it's military, and it's _expensive_ ," Uiharu replies. "Four hundred and thirty _billion_ yen just for 2042 alone. That's big money even for the SDF; it's new-aircraft-carrier money. Whatever it is, the SDF wants it _really_ badly."

"Four hundred and thirty billion..." Saten mumbles. Our eyes meet for a second as we both look up from the laptop screen; she immediately glares and looks away again. _Not forgiven yet, I guess._

"I...I very much do not think that we...that it's permissible for us to be looking at this document," Kuroko says. "Per...perhaps we should just...close it and forget we ever saw it?" She actually looks...nervous?

"Of _course_ we're not supposed to be seeing it, Shirai," Uiharu says with an roll of her eyes. "That's why it was redacted in the first place. But due to some incompetent screwup, we _are_ seeing it, and we're not the first ones to do so, not by a long shot."

"So what is it?" I ask. "Are there any other clues?"

"Well, that's where we get into fuzzier territory," Uiharu says. "We know from the fact that Kiyama was involved that it had something to do with bleeding-edge neuroscience...not that that tells us much, can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting bleeding-edge neuroscience. I haven't found any definite clues yet, buuuuuut I'm also not the first one to look for them."

"And here we go…" Saten interjects, a bit of world-weariness in her voice.

"I know, I know, Ruiko-chan, but believe me, speaking as someone who works for The Man, I can say that they're on the right track more often than you'd think."

"Who is?" I ask, suddenly curious.

Uiharu flashes me a grin. " _Conspiracy theorists_." She taps a couple keys on her computer, and all of a sudden the tackiest-looking website I've ever seen pops up in front of me. "BEYOND EYES ONLY", it proclaims at me in English, and more importantly in a font that looks like an eight-year-old's idea of 'alien writing'.

"Oh, for...Onee-sama, come. We're going home, we've wasted enough time on this nonsense." Kuroko's already on her way out the door, but I stay planted where I am. What can I say? I want to see where Uiharu is going with this.

"Okay, hear me out. The kind of folks who hang out on these forums...they believe some seriously crazy shit, yeah. But they are _always_ looking for information to _confirm_ that crazy shit, and that means that sometimes they find connections that, uh, more stable people wouldn't. Of course, you have to sort those from the connections they find that don't actually exist, but, well, you get the idea."

"Lots of Type I errors but not many Type IIs," I say quietly.

"Bingo. That and they find actual, hard information most people would never even think to look for. Where do you think I found out about the budget document in the first place?"

"Okay...so, what are they saying about RADIO NOISE?"

"Well, you know, mostly the usual." She pulls up a bookmarked page—it looks like the website is a forum of some kind—and starts scrolling through the posts there. "Government mind control program, corporate mind control program, flat-Earth coverup, hollow-Earth coverup, one guy thinks it's giving him intrusive thoughts about his waifu not being real. But between all that...there's a general consensus based on looking through other unredacted budgets that it's been running since 2039 through today, and—this is the interesting part—the beginning of the program coincides with large budget changes at three Academy City companies: Citrine Communications, Higuchi Pharmaceuticals, and Redline Systems." She's talking faster, really getting into it now. I don't blame her; even Kuroko's made her way back to the glow of the laptop screen. "All three of them are known to be SDF contractors buuuuuuuut here's the thing. Citrine makes hardened communications equipment—satellite radios, telemetry processors and the like. Redline makes Linux boxes specially built for real-time computing. Higuchi...well, Higuchi mostly does gene therapy, but they also do some neurological stuff—their logo is on a lot of the equipment they use for the Kihara Process, in fact."

"And we know it's neuroscience, so it's got to be Higuchi, right?" I ask.

"Well, hold up, that just means it's _at least_ Higuchi. It could _also_ be a collaboration with Citrine or Redline, or all three. But yes, Higuchi is a good place to start."

"Okay, so, Higuchi is our starting point. Where do we start poking?"

Uiharu frowns at me. "Start...look, Misaka-san, everything I've found so far is based on publicly available information. Accidentally public, sure, but even so. If we actually go trying to find less public stuff, there's a very real risk that it could bring, uh, unwanted attention onto us."

I look her straight in the eye. "And that's a reason to stop?"

"Not for me. But…" She looks around at the other two.

"I'm in. No more secrets," Saten says flatly.

All of us turn to look at Kuroko. "Er...this is _extremely_ irregular, and I'm not sure I can condone it," she says, sounding as conflicted as she looks. "But on the other hand…" She sighs. "I cannot deny that certain aspects of the Kiyama incident were _also_ extremely irregular, and that this...er...investigation might be a way to reveal the full truth of what happened there. I will not try to stop you, but I will need some more solid evidence before I help you."

"Yeeeeeeah, that's about what I expected to hear from you," Uiharu says. "No worries. I have a feeling you'll come around once we have some more dirt. Now, as for where to start digging, I had a few ideas…"

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry, everyone, this took far longer to write than I expected. There are reasons, some of them good, some of them less so, but regardless you can rest assured that the Rewrite Project is by no means dead.


End file.
